What did you lose?
by TEi Has Pants
Summary: Zoey tries to get Francis to open up in the bombed out airport terminal. Maybe he lost something significant to the infection, like everyone else. Friendship story.


_**What did you lose?**_

**Author's Note:** Left 4 Dead and all characters, events and places are copyright Valve. This story was made exclusively for entertainment purposes - nothing more, nothing less. Story is rated PG-13 for general theme.

- - -

"Francis, did you lose anything to the infection?"

From the corner of her eyes, Zoey saw Francis wipe his nose with his thumb, his other hand half-heartedly clutching an empty pistol, draped over his knee. Grunting, he muttered, "Whaddaya mean? What's there to lose? I mean - aside from rules, and all that crap. So far as I care, that's more of a gain than a loss. Now I can blow the hell outta things and not have to worry about the cops comin' down on me!"

Zoey sighed and shook her head. Maybe trying to open up to _Francis_ was a bad idea - Louis was more receptive, and Bill was easy to relate to on this sort of subject, if not a bit gruff. Francis, though - the man was a moose, and it wouldn't surprise her if his higher brain functions were fueled by beer. They had to use the bathroom in shifts when they weren't in a safe house; Louis and Bill had won the coin tosses and had taken to the stalls in the thrashed, bombed airport, leaving Zoey and the Bar Room Brawler on guard duty. She furrowed her brow as Francis grabbed a fresh clip of ammo and snapped it into the pistol, setting it aside and picking up his shotgun, feeding new shells into it. The man couldn't be _that_ hard to get through to, could he? It wasn't like they were fighting for their lives against hoards of zombies or anything like that - not like he hadn't saved her from a Smoker, or she hadn't pushed that Hunter off of him. No, they were complete strangers from different worlds with completely extenuating circumstances, and - well, it wasn't really her schtick to try to make sense of all this. That was a Louis thing.

"No, I mean - something meaningful."

"What, being part of the world's biggest bar fight ain't meaningful?" Francis grinned, framed by his bristly beard. The tattoos on his bare arms danced as he slid in the shells, shimmering in what little light peered in through the gargantuan glass windows across the hall. The sky had turned red - dawn was only a few hours away, but looking at it reminded Zoey waaay too much of those apocalyptic horror movies. You know, the kind where everything went to shit, and there were only a handful of people left in a desolate wasteland trying to survive against all sorts of crazy odds. Now _there_ was a helluva thing.

Against the backdrop of furious crimson clouds roiling above, the destroyed ruins of the airport terminal spanned out ahead. Rows of chairs bolted into the ground, most still intact while others had been blown clear, or melted from the heat of whatever the hell kind of bombs they used on this place. Detritus of all kinds, from rubble to old hotdogs and empty cans of beans, to broken glass to - to teddy bears - littered the ground, casting oblong silhouettes against the floor; nearby, a support pillar had been shattered by a crashed plane, lying discarded - almost casually, like a toy - on the shimmering tiles a few yards back. The plane in question had plowed through the roof of the airport, snapped clean in half, as if it were made of plastic instead of...well, industrial plastic, and metal, and whatever the hell else planes were made of. The tail draped partway across the path they'd passed through to get here, and from around the corner and down a flight of stairs, a flickering, orange glow danced across the bleached, stone walls, flames still wriggling and alive, even though there was no way to tell how long it had been here.

The floor was cold beneath her butt, the air was cold against her skin, her ears were cold, her nose was cold...everything about this place was cold. And creepy. And eerie. Even though there had been zombies, the stale, raw sensation of abandonment permeated the atmosphere, smothering the terminal with an inhuman silence. Zombies burbled and grunted in the distance - there would definitely be more between here and the safe house - but the lack of man-made sound unnerved her. No humming electricity. No corny lobby music. No bustling people, no deafening roar of chatter and announcements for outgoing and incoming flights, or the hiss of those suitcases with wheels as they seared a path along the tiled floor. No screaming children. Nothing, none of it - just the subtle _ka-click, ka-click, ka-click_ of Francis reloading the shotgun.

Outside, she could see the decimated runway; obliterated planes sprawled across the tarmac, an obscene graveyard for aircraft, the ground sundered by bombs and crash damage. Only one plane looked like it was in decent enough shape to fly...hopefully there would be a pilot inside ready to get them the hell out of here. Maybe this time it would stick. Maybe this time, their newfound accomplice _wouldn't_ have been bitten, _wouldn't_ turn into an infected, _wouldn't_...

Hope had become a fickle thing. Two failed escape attempts already; the infamous, almighty, and anonymous They had a couple sayings about this situation. They said, third time's the charm...and They also said, three strikes, you're out. Zoey and the others had been on the run together for over two weeks now - two weeks living out of canned and boxed food, two weeks without constant access to a real bathroom, two weeks of taking showers with sink water (and soap was a rare luxury, if there was any left from - from before the infection). Two weeks of constantly moving, of keeping your eyes open, sweeping your gaze through one desolate street or town or subway or tunnel or suburb, squinting into the shadows to find a lurking zombie ready to lunge out at you and take a bite outta your ass.

Two weeks of headaches, of everything Zoey had ever known being torn away, reality becoming just another horror movie, getting - getting so hard to draw the distinction now, but if she didn't laugh, didn't keep hand wrapped firmly around that old life, she'd go bananas and curl up into a ball and never come out. She might as well be the pert, nubile girl in her underwear in that case - just throw herself to the infected, let them do what they would with her (they had mostly been curb-stomping them up to this point, but she was sure the eating came in _somewhere_ along the line).

So - maybe _that's_ why she was trying to talk to Francis. Maybe this whiny, smelly idiot would be able to give her another anchor to weigh herself down with.

"Well, I guess that's a matter of opinion," Zoey yielded, shrugging and grinning despite herself. "Personally, I wouldn't mind trading lawlessness for safety."

"That's messed up." Francis snorted, but his grin didn't fade. "What could be better than this?"

"_What I meant was_, did you lose...you know. Friends, family." Zoey grimaced - trying to stay on a single topic with Francis was less fruitful than yelling at the screen, berating murderer's next victim for going down the sketchy alley, especially because aforementioned pert, nubile female companion was clinging uselessly to his arm, an elbow decoration with a nice body and a sign on her back saying, "KILL ME PLZ KTHXBAI." Because no matter how much you called the hapless couple a slew of names insinuating a lack of intelligence, they wouldn't respond. "Hell, even drinking buddies. Or a thing - it doesn't have to be a person."

"Mmm, a _thing_, huh?" Francis pursed his lips and ran a gloved hand across his scalp, a fresh layer of stubble growing in, even though he'd just shaved it a few days ago. "Yeah, I guess that would work. I had a motorcycle - she was a beautiful thing. Old, though - had her mostly held together with duct tape."

Zoey chuckled - say what she wanted about the man beside her, he could at least tell a joke every now and then.

"When the infection first hit, I tried riding her out of the city - but you know how these vampires are with loud noises." Francis smirked - Zoey wasn't sure if he was kidding about the 'vampires' thing, because they'd spent most of the first few days correcting him ("They're _zombies_, Francis!") and it hadn't come up again in a while. "But I figured I was clear to go, right? A motorcycle is faster than any zombie, even a Tank. What I _didn't_ count on was running outta gas."

Zoey nodded; they _had_ found Francis holed up in a gas station, the doors and windows barricaded and a shotgun in hand - ready to fire at the three 'zombies' coming too close in search for supplies. "So, you stopped to gas up, but your bike was running all the way there; once you stopped, the zombies caught up to you and you couldn't leave again."

"Hey, it was a pretty good plan up until that part." Francis shrugged and smirked. "But...I miss that bike. I don't even know if she's still there; I left the keys in the ignition, so another survivor could'a just pumped her up without having to worry about the zombies and taken off with her. Or maybe they bombed the damn place, just like here. If we get outta this nightmare...if the infection gets contained...one day I wanna go back and find her again. With any luck, she'll be right where I left her."

Zoey drew a deep breath through her nose, sighed; she'd only known Francis for a short time, but the circumstances had brought them closer together than two people normally would get in a lifetime. Same with Bill and Louis - but exploring Francis' past like this, his attachment to his motorcycle, it was like finding a dollar bill in the deep end of a pool. A really dirty pool filled mostly with cheap hooch, but a pool nonetheless.

Silence fell between the two survivors, and Zoey reached over to her own pistols; with Francis done reloading, she might as well do the same. She slid one clip out, the metal cold and heavy on her palm, the pistol's grip rough and unyielding in her other hand; after a few minutes, with both pistols and her sniper rifle fully armed, Bill and Louis emerged from the bathroom, the latter grunting and hiking his pants up a little higher.

"Man, let me tell you something - you _never_ appreciate toilet paper so much until you don't have it." Louis whistled and grinned. "Three of the stalls are out - other five are good to go, though."

"Please tell me you got one of the five, because I'll seriously reconsider next time you give me pills or first aid." Zoey shoved herself up to her feet and chuckled.

"Don't worry...my hands (and dignity) came away intact."

"Alright, people, cut the chatter." Bill shook his head and sighed, sagging a little bit. "We're almost to the runway; it looks like there's a couple planes left intact out there. Once you're done, we're double-timing it to the saferoom."

Zoey grinned despite herself. She trudged into the inky umbra beyond the door, sticking her hands out to feel her way to the stalls.

"Hey, Zoey..." Francis said from behind her; Zoey glanced around at him (the motion caused her to swipe a counter with her hip, ow, okay, that hadn't been a smart idea), and for a second, thought - maybe she'd reached out to Francis, opened him up a little bit...? "This is the men's room, doll. You sure you ain't tuckin' it?"

Haha, okay, maybe expecting Francis to continue the moment without prompting was asking for too much. Zoey chuckled again and said, "Go use the can, Francis, it speaks your language."


End file.
